A Journey To Romania
by Head full of Flies
Summary: Victor Frankenstein travels to the strange land of Romania to meet with a mysterious nobleman, a Count from the sleepy village of Vaseria, whose interest in Victor's scientific studies leads to Victor questioning everything he thought he knew about himself.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One.

The lament of a wild goose echoed through the empty silence that lay still like a dense mist over the glassy surface of the Red Lake, fading slowly into the soporific sound of water lapping its rocky shores. A heron cast its wings to the air, flew the short distance from a log half-submerged in the shallows to the safety of the thick pines that fringed the far shore. Trees jutted precariously from sheer rocks the colour of veins beneath white skin, their foliage so green they looked almost black, even against the late afternoon sun.

Victor Frankenstein pulled the hood of his cloak over his head to protect against a light veil of rain that drifted from the overhead clouds. He placed his two suitcases down on the sandbank as he paused to study the lake's murky waters, inhaling the deep scent of the new country around him. He held that breath a moment, filling his lungs with cold air. It had been a long, long journey from Ingolstadt. The carriage that had brought him to Romania had left him somewhere in the forested hills of the Eastern Carpathians, a stranger in a foreign place, alone, with little more than the clothes on his back and papers of scientific research in his suitcases. Victor's knees trembled as he stood on the sandbank, out of exhilaration rather than fear. He was free, and away from the eyes of scrutiny.

Victor walked a little way along the narrow sand strip, kicking at pebbles and crunching twigs that littered the shore of the lake. The light was receding over the snow-tipped mountains, already the stars on the distant horizon were chasing the sun away. The lonely cry of a loon echoed over the surface of the still water as a cottage came into sight, small and rickety, built of logs with wood-smoke trickling in a light grey vapour from its chimney. It was as far removed from the modern architecture of Germany's cities as one could get. A nanny goat with a bell clinking around her neck eyed him warily as he approached the gate, gingerly he pushed it open, walked around her as she stood tethered to the fence bordering the little herb garden that adorned the front of the cottage, and knocked three times on the door.

An elderly gentleman answered, his back was stooped, and he carried a cane, his face was weather-beaten and bearded, but he looked kindly enough, and his blue eyes had a youthful glint in them. Victor removed the hood from his head of sandy blonde hair and, dropping his cases again, outstretched a hand.

"Alexandru Costas?" said Victor, "My name is Victor Frankenstein from Ingolstadt, the coachman said I am to be your guest tonight?"

"Victor, yes, please come in," Alexandru shuffled out of the way, and Victor stepped over the threshold into the little cottage.

"I do not possess much," said Alexandru, his cane clicking on the dusty floor as he went to ease himself on a chair in front of a fire that was crackling in the grate, "But I can offer travellers like yourself a warm bed and a hot meal for the night, and goat's milk and fresh bread to break your fast." He gestured across the room with his cane. "You will find your room on the left, it used to belong to my son, but he has long since departed from this world."

Victor thanked him and went to place his suitcases in the room. It was small, but comfortable. The thin pillow cases were stuffed with duck down and there were plenty of blankets for him to keep warm should the night have been cold. Victor knew it got cold in these strange parts of the world, and he admired the people he had met along his journey for their hardy nature. As a man of science, they seemed almost primitive to him, but he admired them nonetheless.

Dinner was a bowl of stew with bread and a generous lump of goat's cheese. They ate in the fading light of the fire's embers, and Victor could hear outside the lapping of the water on the shores of the lake, the lake birds making their last calls of the day before retiring to roost in the trees and rushes. There was a faint squeaking of bats to replace the sound of the water birds, and the distant screech of an owl.

"How long have you lived here, on the shores of the Red Lake?" asked Victor, spooning the last of his stew into his mouth.

"Almost my whole life," replied Alexandru, "I travelled for a while, about ten years or so, but I always knew I'd come back. Romania is my home."

"How did you come to learn English?" Victor inquired.

"When I travelled, the people spoke many languages. English was the only way to communicate. My son also helped me to learn, back when he was still alive," the old man said, sadly.

"Forgive my asking," said Victor, "but how did you come to lose your son?"

Alexandru paused a moment, eyes downcast. Silence fell between the two men. Victor floundered.

"Alexandru I am so sorry, I should not have asked such a personal question…"

" _Nu, nu…"_ said Alexandru in his native tongue, "It is okay, my friend. It is just that the memory still pains me."

"You do not have to say."

"I must say, because I must make others aware of the devilish creatures that make their homes in these very hills. Creatures that somehow crawled their way out from the very pits of Hell and stalk this land with undead feet."

Alexandru lifted his eyes again, from inside his cloak he removed a carved wooden cross and he gave it a firm squeeze as if for reassurance. Victor was silent.

"It was a vampire," he whispered, the way he said the word Victor could almost see drops of hateful venom oozing through the cracks of his gritted teeth. "It was a vampire who took my son."

There was another pause. Victor almost scoffed as he took a sip from his cup of wine, but he managed to subdue it. _The rumours are true,_ he thought. _The belief in superstition here is as powerful as their unrelenting faith in God._

"I'm terribly sorry to hear that," said Victor, "That must have been a dreadful tragedy."

"My friend, where do you travel on to, tomorrow?" asked Alexandru.

"I travel to a village called Vaseria," said Victor. "I received a letter some months ago from a nobleman expressing interest in the scientific research I have been undertaking at the University of Ingolstadt. I had all but given up on the project I was working on, for none of my peers supported my ideas, they said I was 'playing God'. But this man, I believe he is a Count living on the outskirts of Vaseria, has expressed great enthusiasm for my project, and has even paid toward the expenses of my trip!"

"And what project is that?"

Victor grinned, "Why, the reanimation of dead tissue."


	2. Chapter 2

When Victor set out the following morning, just after daybreak, a light snow was falling, and the ground was dressed in white. The surrounding firs and pines all were blanketed in a covering of snow. The lake was silent, void of life save for the rustling of a water-rat in the bulrushes. Alexandru bid Victor goodbye, but not before giving him a parting gift. As he stepped outside of the old man's home, he exhaled a long breath which billowed out upon the air like a cloud. Whilst he stood wrapping his cloak more tightly around him for warmth, Alexandru placed a hand on his shoulder. Victor turned, and Alexandru extended a fist toward his own hand.

"Please take this," he insisted, "May it keep you safe in your travels ahead, Vaseria is a land plagued by ungodly entities."

Victor opened his palm to receive the gift, in his hand was placed a small wooden cross like Alexandru's own, strung on a long piece of cord. Victor was pleasantly surprised, touched by the gift.

"Thank you, Alexandru," said Victor, sincerely, and looped the cross around his neck and inside his shirt. Somehow the weight of the wood resting against his heart already made him feel a little warmer.

Leaving behind Alexandru and his homely cottage, Victor set out again in direction of the road from which he had come. Already the coachman from the day before was there, waiting for him. His horses plunged their heads up and down in impatience as Victor approached. The coachman climbed down from his seat atop the carriage.

"You haven't been waiting long I hope?" said Victor, as the coachman opened the door and took his cases from him. The gruff coachman shook his head.

"Nay, but I want to be off soon as. I need to get to Vaseria and back before nightfall, we've got a long way to go yet and now the snow's started falling. Climb in."

Victor climbed in, and immediately they set off on a path through the mountains. Victor watched out of the window as they climbed, the landscape of the Red Lake and the forest of pines dropping away from him as the carriage trundled into more mountainous territory. The carriage wheels struck at stones and small rocks, making the ascent bumpy. The horses trotted quickly, as if there was some urgency. Leaning his head out of the window Victor shouted to the driver above.

"What is the hurry, if you don't mind me asking?" asked Victor, grimacing as the cold air whipped around his head. "Could you not bed down in Vaseria for the night?"

"I would rather not, if I can help it," said the driver, bluntly. "There's talk of strange goings on in that village, and I'd rather keep well away."

"Strange goings on? Like what?"

"I'm sure you'll find out once you're there, and I hope the villagers take good care of you, if anything old Boris Valerious and his family will make sure you're kept safe. I know some of those Vaseria lot aren't too friendly at the best of times. I know there's one, they call him Top Hat, village undertaker but likes to think of himself as mayor… He's a bit of a dodgy character, mind out for him."

"Oh, I'm sure I will be quite all right," said Victor, thinking of the Count and the noble house he must live in. He imagined a home with luxurious rooms, grand fireplaces, and a great, vast library. "I'll be busy with my studies, the villagers will hardly see hide nor hair of me."

"Strange place to study, Vaseria…" muttered the coachman. "Arse end o' nowhere, but each to their own."

Victor slipped back inside the carriage and shut the window. From one of his suitcases he extracted a book, a dense volume on the workings of human organs and fibrous tissue. He flipped to a page containing an anatomy and detailed study of the human brain and began to read as the carriage rolled through the Eastern Carpathians into the West. Over the course of a few hours, and finding that he'd fallen asleep while reading a chapter about the brain's frontal lobe, a particularly large jolt of the carriage suddenly awakened him.

Outside he heard the horses emit high-pitched whinnies, the carriage sped up for a moment, and Victor was tossed side to side as the carriage rocked and bounced. He slammed shoulder first into the door of the carriage and it opened, out, revealing the snowy, mountainous terrain. Victor, his heart in his mouth, suddenly found himself tumbling out of that door. He hung, suspended in the air, watching the world slide like a conveyer belt beneath him. The stony ground came up to meet him and he hit the ground arm-first, spinning, and tumbling, his clothes and flesh shredding and tearing on the sharp stones. At last he came to rest near a snow drift. He lay for a moment, blinking, the right side of his face pressing hard against the gritty soil. Crying out in pain, he turned over slowly onto his back. Pain shot through his whole body like electricity, he squeezed his eyes tight shut, gritting his teeth. He groaned in agony, spitting foam from between his teeth. Somewhere close to him, he thought he heard a sound like the flapping of giant wings, a dark shape passed over the sun for half a second and was gone. After a moment, everything calmed. Victor, still moaning and gasping in pain, tried to turn to see where the carriage had gone, but he did not see it. Breathing heavily, he collapsed his head and shoulders back onto the ground, clutching his arm. From the corner of his left eye he could see the tracks he had left on the snowy path, gravel and dirt and blood intermingled in a long streak along the mountain road. Victor closed his eyes, and let the darkness of unconsciousness take him.

It was becoming dark when he came to, and he was freezing. A balloon of anxiety swelled in his breast, sucking the air from his lungs, tightening up his chest. In his ears he heard a low growling, the sound of some animal moving across the ground near to him. There was the sound of sniffing, and soon snarling, and it dawned on Victor with a feeling of irrevocable dread what animal that sound came from. Not wanting to see but unable to resist the urge to look, Victor lifted his chin a little, and looked straight in the hungry eyes of an old, ravenous wolf. Lean and gaunt, with battle scars across its grizzled muzzle, the wolf eyed him hungrily, scenting his feet and legs. Victor, paralyzed with fear, could only watch it as it began to circle him, continuing to scent.

"Please," said Victor weakly, raising his trembling hands as if it would help him. "Please… No…"

The wolf continued to take tentative steps around him, Victor could see its ribs sticking through the rough, shaggy fur. This wolf was emaciated, without a pack, a scavenger on the verge of death, starving and in need of meat, warm meat. Victor's blood littered the snow. He realised he smelled of it, of blood and sweat, and of warm, meaty flesh. The wolf's teeth pulled back, blackened gums, broken teeth, black tongue dripping steaming saliva onto the blood-spotted snow. As the wolf's grizzled, gaping maw came closer, and he smelled the sour carrion breath, Victor closed his eyes and prayed.

" _Fugi!"_ came a voice, thickly accented. Victor wondered for a moment if he had imagined it. He still lay with his eyes closed, any moment expecting teeth to start tearing his flesh.

" _Fugi! Lase-l!"_ the deep voice cried again.

Victor breathed, snapping his eyes open. The wolf was leaving, taking scurrying steps backwards, as the stranger approached. There was a warm glow of flames, and a dark figure stood over Victor's body as he lay still as a corpse on the cold ground. The wolf still lingered, hungry for flesh, but the stranger held up a gloved hand toward it.

" _Merge! Mergi acum!"_ He commanded, and at last the wolf fled into the night, in the direction of where the carriage had disappeared. Victor lifted himself onto his elbows, staring after it in disbelief. The stranger turned toward him, and Victor stared at the face illuminated in the light of the burning torch.

A man in a black cloak stood before him, about five feet eleven in height. He gazed down at Victor with eyes as deeply blue as an early evening sky. His hair was long, scraped back from his face and tied at the back, jet black in colour with a few loose strands to frame a long, pale face. The man bent forward to extend a hand.

"Doctor Victor Frankenstein?" he said, his thin lips curling into a half-smile.

Victor took the hand offered to him, and was hauled to his feet with a strength that was somewhat dizzying. The long-haired man steadied him a moment, and then gave him space to breathe.

"Yes," gasped Victor, "Yes, I am Doctor Frankenstein."

The man's half-smile stretched even wider, revealing a set of neat white teeth, and deepening a set of laughter lines that framed his pale mouth.

"Glad to finally be meeting you Doctor," he said, "I am Count Vladislaus…" at this he paused to bow his head, the torchlight gleaming in a ring of light on the crown of his glossy black head. "Dragulia."


End file.
